Background

Dr. Jensen began his teaching and research career at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and moved to Rensselaer in 1987. Currently, he is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering and holds a Professional Engineers license. Among many other university activities, he has served as Associate Chair for Graduate Studies in the department, been on the executive committee of the Faculty Senate, and served as the student-elected member on the Institute-wide Promotion and Tenure Committee.

Dr. Jensen has published over 120 archival technical papers, edited 10 volumes, 30 other assorted reports, and has published an undergraduate textbook on thermal and fluids engineering. He has one patent.

Dr. Jensen is very active in his profession. He has served or is currently serving on the editorial boards of four international journals (Journal of Heat Transfer, Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science; Applied Thermal Engineering, Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology). He served on the Executive Committee of the Heat Transfer Division of the ASME (recently as Chair), and was appointed as Alternate Delegate to Assembly for International Heat Transfer Conferences. He has been chair or co-chair of six international conferences (including the National Heat Transfer Conference,) and has been invited to be on numerous scientific committees for other national and international conferences. He is an active reviewer for numerous international journals and conferences and NSF, DOE, NASA, and NYSERDA proposals, and was founding editor of Thermal Science and Engineering Applications.

Research Interests

Heat transfer

Fluid mechanics

Heat exchanger in boiling and two-phase flows

Enhanced heat transfer

Solar energy

Fuel cells

Thermal management of electronic systems

Sustainability

As principal investigator on 38 sponsored programs, including 17 multi-year grants from NSF, DOE, NIST, NYSERDA, and industry, Dr. Jensen's research interests have been directed toward convective single- and two-phase heat transfer and the associated fluid flows with an emphasis on these processes in heat exchangers and using enhanced heat transfer techniques. This research has been experimentally based, but numerical analysis using sophisticated computational fluid dynamics codes that can handle many general situations has been and is being used to complement the experimental work and to suggest additional avenues for investigation.

Recent research has involved boiling and two-phase flow in microchannels (as applied to electronic cooling), transport processes in proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells, development of a building integrated photovoltaic system, and the development of a thermal management approach for distributed, large-scale, high-power electronic systems. With his graduate students (26 MS, 13 PhD), Dr. Jensen has performed both fundamental and applied research and has conducted both experimentally and numerically based research on a wide range of topics.